


A Human Concept

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [195]
Category: Invasion America
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Food, Aliens, Captives, Cryogenics, Gen, Nudity, Rest and relaxation, Teambuilding, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 22:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10817895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: The community cavern was a quiet, nearly-empty area Jim was happy to collapse into, even with the sudden nostalgia that came with wishing for a cheeseburger and a nice tall Pepsi.





	A Human Concept

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RainbowGal](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=RainbowGal).



The community cavern was a quiet, nearly-empty area Jim was happy to collapse into, even with the sudden nostalgia that came with wishing for a cheeseburger and a nice tall Pepsi. David had mentioned these not twenty minutes ago after they'd got the patrol ships under cloak again-- and was now enjoying a nice bath, rather than suffering through Jim's craving with him.

He didn't even know why he wanted one, exactly. He hadn't even been on Earth in over a year, and it wasn't like there was a Speedy Burger settled on the nearest set of dust-rings. Not yet, at least. Maybe after the war, and after humans learned deep-space travel.

But sometimes a want for things he couldn't have snuck up on him; he'd spent over six months on the Rez with David and the Ooshati before they'd brought the fight back into space, and Jim had wanted to physically touch his mother so bad sometimes he could have felt her sitting next to him. The occasional phone call home helped, but not as much as it could have, and not as much as he would have liked.

Now he didn't even have phone calls. David had warned him of that, when Jim had insisted coming along. No phonecalls, no letters, no nothing. But they had Ooshati still on earth watching out for her; Jim got reports sometimes. Someone had seen her in a little town called Pitchfork, while they were driving up to Cheyenne to physically talk to Amy. Some things were just too important to say over com-orbs unless they had no choice, and reports between Earth and David-- and sometimes Earth and Jim-- were more often than not coded.

Some of the codes were more complicated than others. Which was why Jim was relaxing in this community cavern, off the beaten path.

The transport ship David had captured had been a cryo-ship, just like reports had guessed. Some of the people had to have been up and taken months ago, but there were at least a dozen people back on the Rez specifically looking for disappearances with no real explanation. They couldn't catch everybody, they couldn't track everything; the world was a much bigger a place than just America. Jim was under no illusions that many more ships had already been sent, and many more would be. But it was a victory, and it had raised the spirits of so many as it was.

Even the Manticorans seemed uplifted. Basoak especially, who seemed mostly happy just because it made Jim happy, and who had carved out a large chunk of hunting ground and taken to teaching Jim the local manners. After running off their Tyrusian overlords, the natives had given them the caves and attached temples to use as their own, and the few natives they still had within their ranks had taken to hunting in the surrounding areas, which also gave the ships a place to land.

It was heavily implied that it was all Jim's fault.

Jim would have been okay with this if he was any good at playing diplomat, or peacekeeper, or any thing of the sort. David had left the cryo-ship with them to be fixed and the victims tended, and of the thirty, five of them were men, and they'd had to sedate nearly all of them. Those who hadn't been were still struggling, despite it.

Jim had tried, but human beings on a whole weren't made of the strongest stuff. To know there were creatures out there from their nightmares... There was a reason mankind was afraid of the dark, intrinsically. It was coded into their DNA or something.

Jim was still trying. He just didn't want to have to tell David that he had failed.

That was why he'd picked this community room, after all. Nearby where he'd had their rescues tucked, in case someone had to the brave heart to seek out company that wasn't each other. This was where he always came, after he'd done everything else he could for the day and had pretty well worn himself out. Any other way and the emergence of a rescue would have probably sent him fleeing for cover like a coward.

But it had all the amenities, including a small stream that they'd managed to harrow off into a bit of a bath, and a latrine so to speak, and the cavern here itself they kept a fair bit of food stored. Jim dutifully glared at the store's place from his little nest for several long moments, before he willed himself to his feet. Basoak would be coming to find him shortly to make sure he'd eaten, effectively completing the ritual as it was, and Jim hardly wanted to disappoint him.

Basoak was a friend. Jim didn't have a whole lot of those, not enough to risk loosing them over something so ridiculous as skipping a meal.

“...are... are you Jim?”

He was in the middle of picking through the stores and putting what he wanted in a bowl, and nearly dropped it in his start. Turning around revealed one of the rescues had emerged into the cavern, hovering close to the wall and close enough to the exit that she could vanish into the shadows if Jim made a wrong move.

“Yes ma'am. How can I help?”

Jim watched her, trying to pin a name to a face; he'd read the ship manifest, and some of the cryo-tubes had been labeled, but of course they hadn't been shipping passengers. Some of the Ooshati medics had done some digging in the tube medical history, of course, and come up with names, but it wasn't like Jim hadn't read all of those recently-translated histories in the last week or so, so the names couldn't get tangled or anything.

But she was pretty, in his opinion. All of them were, and Jim was biased anyway, since there were only a handful of pure Earth-born humans out here in space with them and humans in space were pretty scarce anyway. The pirate and the Emperor's envoy were the only ones otherwise.

But she was pretty; not Hollywood knock-out-model pretty, maybe, but still. She had curly auburn hair, pretty and fairly bright even in the light, though not terribly long, only about the shoulders. He wondered if that was her style, or if they'd cut it when they caught her, or if they'd not froze her immediately after capture and it had grown out. Her skin wasn't pale by human standards-- though alien was another matter entirely-- and he judged it kind of the sun-kissed color, because colors were a thing he did now, whether he wanted to or not.

He couldn't tell what color her eyes were, not from this distance, just that she was watching him pretty hard. And also that she looked really nice in some of the more modest local garb, and spoke English really, really well. Though having been away from Earth so long, he couldn't place where the accent might have been from.

As it was he'd spent his last six months on the planet learning an alien language and the local native tongue, and in the last year he'd just started dropping loanwords and pronunciations into his speech like it was going out of style. He wasn't the only one who'd done it, either, and even the pure Tyrusians couldn't claim to be exempt. People on Earth kept asking what this word meant, or that one, or for them to repeat a word because they couldn't quite figure it out anymore.

That Jim was trying to teach Basoak English while Jim learned the local tongue probably didn't help him any, but Jim had gotten to the point he could have a fluent conversation with just about anybody who actually lived on the planet. He counted it a win despite it all. They hadn't been here all that long, after all.

Also that the Tyrusians couldn't seem to pick it up made Jim feel incredibly better, but that might have been the Manticorans just being petty.

“The note said you would be here. That you could explain?”

“I can try. Have a sit.” Jim motioned to the piles of blankets and occasional pillow piled up around the cavern. The natives used the blankets the same as they did, at least, and community groups sometimes liked community napping space, like they were some sort of really weird space-bear or something. Apparently.

They also decided Jim was the only one allowed to see them nap, which was an issue Jim wasn't going to even think about right now.

Aliens!

Jim got another bowl and started picking through the Earth-food they had stored back here, ironically pulled from the same cargo ship. There were a fair bit of canned goods, but most of it had been frozen the same as more precious cargo. They unfroze it in bits and pieces, so nothing went to waste. The sedated people had to be fed, he understood and was kind of happy not to know the details, but fruits and bottled water were being delivered to and used by the rest.

The former of course were being tended to by actual healers under Siri's command. The others were Jim's problem. He'd assigned one of the hybrids to do it when she'd expressed interest in it-- a girl named Kaylee, roughly his own age. She'd reported to Jim just this morning how they had been doing, spoken to them a little, tried to reassure them that they were guests, not prisoners.

Apparently left them notes saying that he hung out in the community cavern in his off hours, ready to answer questions.

Jim shook his head, snagging a bottle of water as he carted her bowl of fruit to her desired pile of blankets. He had to go back for his own, and made a point to stop and fill an earthen-ware mug with a fruit juice he was particularly fond of. Basoak liked a specific wine that Jim dutifully stayed away from, since he was apparently an officer, but he'd kept this juice around ever since Jim had tasted it.

After a moment of hesitation, he filled a second mug and brought it to the girl, too.

“So I imagine you have questions?”

“Many,” She agreed. Jim was willing to wait. “But first, manners. My name is Bridget May, and you are Jim...?”

Bridget May. Jim remembered her file. Nothing in specific had stuck out about it, made it specifically special, because all the reports and medical had been pretty different but mostly the same. She wasn't an American, which shouldn't have surprised him but did, until they'd gotten to the section of the report that said she'd come into the country for some reason and they had made the choice to take her then and then it really hadn't surprised him at all. Her parents were alive, she'd an Aunt and Uncle, a few cousins. No siblings. A cat. Good grades and a healthy medical record, and was, apparently, a virgin.

Not that that had surprised them. Some of the Dragit's projects, they'd found, were ridiculously specific. Though virginity wasn't a must, he remembered David saying, it was something well-looked upon; and if they were being taken for the reason David thought they were, well, Jim could see why.

Argh. He had to pay attention.

“Jim Bailey. It's a pleasure to meet you, Bridget.” A year in space, Jim didn't offer to shake anyone's hand anymore, and it startled him more then it aught to have for her to offer. He accepted it. “I'm afraid I didn't get to do much more than oversee things when you and the others were being woken up.”

There were reasons for that, of course. The first and foremost being that Jim wasn't particularly adept in Tyrusian tech, and Siri hadn't wanted him to screw anything up. The second was that there had been too many people jostling around for space that all Jim could do was watch and try to stay out of the way. David had seen it in, told Jim what it was, and then immediately had to go back out again, so someone had had to watch from the sidelines, to report it all.

Which was, for all intents and purposes, Jim's job.

This was, too, and far more pleasing. So long as Bridget didn't pass out or have a mental breakdown or start attacking him. Jim could defend himself, lethally if need be, but Bridget was already a victim here. But the last thing he wanted was to wound her again, no matter the method; he wanted her and the others to be able to trust them. To be able to trust him.

He didn't think it was too much to ask, that the few humans this side of the solar system actually like him. The Ooshati were slowly learning to tolerate him, mostly because David was forcing them to, but familiarity bred contempt; honestly, with the racism and hostility that sometimes sparked, Jim would have given anything for it to be based on skin color or something. But it wasn't; virtually every single Ooshati looked human, Tyrus-born or Earth-born didn't matter. Very few had too-sharp features that screamed they weren't.

But a few of them were under the impression that if one wasn't born on Tyrus, they didn't have a stake. If one wasn't pure Tyrusian, they didn't belong. And they had so many here who were hybrids, and a few that were entirely human but from the Rez, Alana and Eddie's group, and a quiet Ga'lim and one Tyrusian who's smile reminded Jim of the Joker.

Oh, and David. It was impossible to forget David. But still, if Jim didn't know David's mother was human, he would think David were a pure-blooded Tyrusian too. Sometimes he had trouble remembering that.

But racism was a whole lot more complicated when it was actually the species they didn't like.

Another part of the reason the rescues were in this cavern, far away from anyone who might take offense to their even being in space.

“I saw you.” Bridget confessed, picking up her bowl to examine it, holding it awkwardly so nothing spilled as she checked the bottom. Jim nursed his mug of juice, halfheartedly picking through his own bowl. He scooped out a glowing tuber root and bit down on it, sugar-sweet filling his mouth as he waited. Bridget was the one with questions, after all, and he couldn't give her what she needed unless she told him what it was. “...can you... explain what is going on?”

Hardest questions needed to be first, Jim supposed. He swallowed down mashed root and juice, holding the dripping other end over his bowl. “Your situation doesn't make a lot of sense out of context, I'm afraid, but I'll try.” Man, where to start... “Do you believe in aliens, Bridget?”

She blinked at him. “Sorry?”   
  
“Little green men with great big eyes and antennae?” He offered, and winced as soon as the words left his mouth. American assumption not withstanding, Jim had never actually seen any aliens that looked like that. Alien was even a hotbed word; according to their occasionally-around ship of pirates and the still-visiting Imperial trying to work things out with David for the mutual benefit of their two forces, the word alone could cause fights and riots, and throwing it at the wrong person was a good way to get a blaster-bolt to the face. Jim was better than that. “Not that they really look like that, of course, but you know what I mean. Extraterrestrials?”

“Beings from outer space,” Bridget's voice was quiet, and closed; or, not really closed, but not giving much of anything away, either. Jim could almost sympathize, if he had known which way he was sympathizing with; if she did believe in aliens, that was a lot of ridicule back on earth. If she didn't? Jim could only imagine how the conversation must already feel to her. But either way it didn't give him a lot to go on, except that she seemed to be holding herself together remarkably well. “...let's... pretend that I do.”

“Alright.”

Deciding what to tell her was easier than he might have thought. Deciding what he could tell her... well. It wasn't so hard. The truth was the best alternative Jim had to everything, and simple enough.

An alien planet was involved in a civil war over who the rightful leader was, and whether or not to invade certain other planets, and Earth was caught up in it in the same way America was caught up in world affairs: like a cat tangled in bundles of yarn. The current leader of this alien planet had a want for a lot of things Earth had, from space to vegetation to climate and water, and to... other things.

Jim kept his eyes on his bowl as he explained that Bridget and the others had been cryogenicly frozen for transport. That someone had thrown out a warning for them to be on the watch for the ship, and that they had managed to catch it in transit. That they had been brought down planet-side and thawed out. He did not explain that it might have been easier to keep them frozen; no jostling over space, no extra mouths to hunt for. No extra people taking up the bandaging or needing to be protected, no one needing to be trained because everyone had to know how to defend themselves, thus taking people from doing other things that also needed to be done.

But stolen cargo like this, the Dragit and his people would be looking for. Jim had to have them in some semblance of something, just in case something did happen and Jim couldn't protect them. No matter how much he wanted otherwise, there were limits to the power Jim wielded among the Ooshati and limits to his skills.

He was only human, after all.

“What...” Jim glanced up at the sound of her voice, watched her set her bowl back on the floor before her. She looked nervous, and Jim was oddly, selfishly grateful for it for some reason. If she weren't unsettled about this whole thing, he'd have been worried. When David and Amy had told him what was up, Jim had already had dozens of reasons to take their word for face value. Bridget didn't have any of that. “Do you... I mean. Do you know what... they wanted? Why us? Why me?”

Jim shoved the tuber root in his mouth to keep from answering immediately.

It was a question he didn't want to answer. But it was his responsibility, and if he was only human, what did that make Bridget? The rest of the rescues? Jim might not be able to take the people the Dragit were throwing at them hand to hand, but he could at least hold his own until he got a bit of help. He'd been taught how to fight back, and he was good at it, too.

They didn't have any of that. They were human, pure and simple; he owed the truth to them just because of that. They deserved their answers.

He still didn't want to do it.

He washed it down with a mouthful of juice and sighed. “I don't think I should say.” Bridget's eyes narrowed, Jim was sure. Even in the artificial lighting, he'd gotten used to seeing really well. Watching miniscule changes that wouldn't have mattered, because everyone else in here was used to keying things on scent. But Jim had to watch. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It's not that I can't answer. But there are others who could explain it better than I can.”

Even Siri would be better at having this conversation. Siri could back up what he'd learned in his youth with what he'd witnessed on the Rez, knew the reason as well as Jim did, could extrapolate the semantics for her and bring all the medical mumbo-jumbo down to the level a human being could understand.

Siri wasn't here right now. And it wasn't Siri's job.

But whatever she was feeling or thinking, Bridget was still quiet, considering. Blessedly gentle. “Please try.”

Jim fumbled. “Well, I--”

“You were going to be a surrogate womb.”

David, he who could navigate his way through the landmine that was political BS and traps and probably talk assassins into working for him, but he couldn't talk sweet to a girl to save his life.

Jim knew. He'd seen more than one girl on the Rez huff at him. Part of it, he remembered Amy telling him, was because they'd been raised by Rafe, and Rafe barely knew how to talk to a girl. He'd brought them up as guerrilla soldiers first and foremost, people destined to take back their home, and he'd had to learn how to be their friends, after that.

Bridget's mouth opened, closed, opened again. Snapped shut as deep scarlet crawled it's way across her cheeks, eyes fixated on the figure standing behind Jim.

Jim smiled and waved absently over his shoulder with one hand. “David, this is Bridget May, one of our rescues. Bridget, this is David. True king of Tyrus.”

Bridget covered her mouth with her hand. Jim furrowed his brow.

“David-Oosha at your service, Miss May.” A towel dropped down next to Jim. He stared at it, realization slowly dawning. “Oooh. Is that barrows drown you have there? Let me have a taste. We've been drinking coffee for too long, apparently.”

“...David. Please tell me you are wearing clothes.”

“You want me to lie? Why would I do that?”

Sometimes, Jim forgot modesty was a human-invented concept.


End file.
